I’d say I was pretty young when I first started my period. I was only 8 years old, turning 9 in about two months. I remember the day vividly. I spent the day upstairs on New Year’s Eve while family and friends were over. I wasn’t in the mood to be bothered with everyone laughing and talking unnecessarily loud at all. I had been in a cranky mood all month and didn’t know why. In the midst of watching Purple Rain (my favorite movie), eating everything in sight, and crying before the sad part even happened, I had to go to the bathroom REALLY bad. I went, and as I wiped, I saw this “red stuff” on the toilet paper and some in my underwear. Being the naïve little girl I was, I simply thought it was fruit juice and went on about my day (yes, fruit juice – don’t judge me). After the movie finished, I went to the bathroom yet again, this time with some serious stomach pains and MORE red stuff. I began to fear that I was, in fact, starting my period, but didn’t know how to get my mom away from the crowd to give her the big news. After panicking for about five minutes, I made a huge decision on my own: I grabbed one of my mom’s pads and tried my best to figure out how to use the “big diaper looking thing”. The next day while my mom did laundry, she found my period stained underwear and celebrated for what seemed like two hours, singing and dancing about how her little girl was becoming a woman. Boy was I glad I didn’t let her know while we had company…
By Nandi F.
Girls Only Club